It takes more than fancy tattoos and a cool haircut to be a rock star—you need to have the complete package. That includes being thin, attractive, and powerful—and you have to hit all the right notes. Dell attempted this with its slim, gorgeous Adamo XPS a few years back, but the company soon realized that the system met only two of those requirements. What could have been a great laptop lacked power and features, with a low-powered processor, limited storage and ports, and short battery life.
So on October 24, 2011, Dell is launching its XPS 14z, a thin, gorgeous, full-featured notebook that brings to mind the old Adamo. It’s meant to be a rock-star notebook for rock-star professionals who buy their own PCs and use them at work—just like many of us have been doing with our smartphones for years. And while we tested the base unit (minus 2GB of RAM), we see enough raw talent here to pass it through to the next round and recommend it for the rock stars among you.
Unlike the Adamo, which was heavy on the beauty but light on brains, the XPS 14z is equipped with solid components, even at its lowest configuration. Our test unit featured an Intel Core i5-2430M CPU, a 500GB hard drive, Intel's on-processor integrated graphics, and 4GB of RAM. (U.S. models will come with 6GB of RAM standard for the same price.) This base configuration is $999. Dell offers three more configurations that reach up to $1,599. The top one has a Core i7-2640M processor, a 256GB solid-state drive, 8GB of RAM, and a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 520M graphics processor with 1GB of video memory. The mid-level models use one of these two processors, 750GB hard drives, and the same Nvida graphics card as in the high-end model. You can find those for $1,199 and $1,299, and they all go on sale November 1.
The thinnest 14-inch laptop with an internal optical drive, Dell’s XPS 14z showed us a lot to like in our trials. We have some quibbles about the audio, as well as the placement and selection of the ports, but if you’re just as serious about design as you are about your work, the Dell XPS 14z deserves an equally serious look.
Unlike the Adamo, which was heavy on the beauty but light on brains, the XPS 14z is equipped with solid components, even at its lowest configuration. Our test unit featured an Intel Core i5-2430M CPU, a 500GB hard drive, Intel's on-processor integrated graphics, and 4GB of RAM. (U.S. models will come with 6GB of RAM standard for the same price.) This base configuration is $999. Dell offers three more configurations that reach up to $1,599. The top one has a Core i7-2640M processor, a 256GB solid-state drive, 8GB of RAM, and a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 520M graphics processor with 1GB of video memory. The mid-level models use one of these two processors, 750GB hard drives, and the same Nvida graphics card as in the high-end model. You can find those for $1,199 and $1,299, and they all go on sale November 1.
The thinnest 14-inch laptop with an internal optical drive, Dell’s XPS 14z showed us a lot to like in our trials. We have some quibbles about the audio, as well as the placement and selection of the ports, but if you’re just as serious about design as you are about your work, the Dell XPS 14z deserves an equally serious look.
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